Martin Thorley 马丁 Profile picture
UK-China book: https://t.co/fNMgtRmQm6 Senior Analyst at @GI_TOC. PhD on shadow international relations. Previously academia. Views my own. Erstwhile 北漂儿
Dec 16 22 tweets 7 min read
1/21 After days of speculation about #PrinceAndrew, Pitch@Palace, and links to China, Chris Yang's (Yang Tengbo/ 杨腾波) identity is now public knowledge. As ever, there is more to the story than meets the eye... 2/21 Having lived a long time in China, I returned in the mid-2010s to pursue a PhD in shadow international relations between the UK and China. After performing preliminary research to select case studies, I briefly considered including Yang and his UK business... Image
Mar 20, 2023 6 tweets 3 min read
1/6 I've been testing a few things on ChatGPT to see how it might assist research. There appear to be some fascinating confabulations. I asked it to provide three of the most prominent academic articles on the Chinese party-state 2016-2019. Look carefully at the results...🧐 Image 2/6 As far as I can tell, none of these articles by Jude Blanchette, @mcgregorrichard, or @RobertLawrKuhn actually exist (I'm happy to be corrected). Yet they do seem plausible. The final example is a book last published in 2011 rather than an article.
I tried again...
Oct 27, 2022 35 tweets 12 min read
1/n Who owns London? In my latest article, I explore the relationship between authoritarianism & capitalism by investigating Chinese + Hong Kong-linked high-value property transactions in London 2010-20. Let’s take a look… link.springer.com/article/10.105… 2/n Of the various findings, the most intriguing is a pattern that appears in many of the 35 transactions. On the Chinese buyer side, we often find links to the party-state (sometimes to overseas influence organs directly).
Jan 13, 2022 21 tweets 9 min read
1/20 The news about "Chinese agent" Christine Lee broke today. I've been following her case for some time & in fact she featured in my PhD thesis on UK-China hidden relations. She's appeared in stories by @thetimes & @GuidoFawkes before. Yet there's still a lot more to this case. 2/20 Frankly, if you have experience of the Chinese party-state, it would be hard to miss her enmeshment with it. The contrast between her presence in the UK and China is eye-opening, however, and raises some questions for a few well-placed British citizens and institutions.
Nov 18, 2021 9 tweets 4 min read
1/9 There's a widening gulf between business concerns & traditional state concerns on China in tech. It emerged today that Huawei & Alibaba are sponsoring Europe's Gaia-X cloud computing event. But a far smaller story from France this morning better illustrates this phenomenon🇫🇷 2/9 @Intel_Online reported that Chinese semiconductor group FATRI (西人马) is now making solid headway in France thanks to connections in Airbus and the French Parliament. intelligenceonline.com/corporate-inte…
Nov 27, 2020 7 tweets 2 min read
Today I have submitted my PhD thesis: "Fool’s Gold?: Sino-British Elites and the ‘Golden Era’ of Relations"😅. The study brings an investigative research approach to three case studies and the interconnections between them. Each case study produced genuinely revelatory findings. PhD Thesis front cover The Freedom of Information requests, targeted dual language background checks, & inter-case connections appear to demonstrate coordinated party-state activity in the UK, including targeting of high profile political figures, influence over APPGs, & commercial entity compromise.